


Alone Among The Wreck

by phantomreviewer



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (if you can call it love), Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Enjolras is calculating and unemotional, Grantaire is ugly and obsessive, M/M, Pre-Barricade, Unrequited Love, there is no such thing as true love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomreviewer/pseuds/phantomreviewer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But within Grantaire lies a fanaticism, like devotion, but far more virulent and dangerous.</p>
<p>Enjolras.</p>
<p>When Grantaire looks at Enjolras he is like a man holding a candle flame between his palms. The flame burns your skin, to the extent of blistering it, but to remove your hands from the wick would be to risk the light. In cupping the flame between your hands you are burning your fingers and hiding the light from others. But the warmth of it hurts too much to dare to put it down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone Among The Wreck

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mumford & Sons' 'Little Lion Man', which also acted as the main background piece to this fic's composition. 
> 
> _"You know that you have seen this all before / Tremble Little Lion Man, / You'll never settle any of your scores / Your grace is wasted in your face, / Your boldness stands alone among the wreck."_

Grantaire is an ugly man. He doesn’t try to hide it behind ideology or passion; instead he lets it fester in his heart, like a disease. His intellect only highlights the suffering writ on his face. A combination of pox, drink and life has wounded him both outside and in, marking his face like the scars of battle, and showing them to the world as a proud warrior tells his stories through his broken flesh. Grantaire tops up his ugliness with wine, until he hopes to drown himself in the nectar of life. Death chasing after life as with all of the greatest parables.

His companions question his apathy, and ask whether his ugliness originates from his cynical attitude, or whether his cynical attitude comes from his ugliness. They say that had he been blessed with the beauty of his friends such as Courfeyrac and Combeferre, then he may share in their ideals as well as their fate. Grantaire scoffs at them, batting away their unspoken concern, saying it is in ugliness that we see the reality of the world. And then he laughs, turning his deprecation towards himself and causing his friends to laugh alongside him.

But within Grantaire lies a fanaticism, like devotion, but far more virulent and dangerous.

Enjolras.

When Grantaire looks at Enjolras he is like a man holding a candle flame between his palms. The flame burns your skin, to the extent of blistering it, but to remove your hands from the wick would be to risk the light. In cupping the flame between your hands you are burning your fingers and hiding the light from others. But the warmth of it hurts too much to dare to put it down.

Grantaire is burning with it from the inside out.

Impossible in appearance both within and without.

A fanned flame burns strongest, and Grantaire can no more disobey Enjolras’ sporadic instructions to attend his rooms as he could sprout wings and fly from Paris into the sun, although he concedes that the effect is similar. What this flame is, deep in the place where Grantaire's soul should reside is beyond pure adoration. Beyond logic. Beyond reason.

The wine, the absinth, the brandy helps to tame it so that he can spit vitriol as opposed to words of misguided and unknown passion. But alcohol is as flammable as Grantaire is himself and all burns brightly in the darkness.

Enjolras looks upon the others, looks upon Les Amis with companionship, if not friendship. Willing to call each man comrade and brother.

Not Grantaire

It is enough that he looks on him at all.

The backroom of the Musian is crowded with schoolboys and wine and muskets, and amid the shadows flung high against the walls Grantaire drinks with his friends and Enjolras watches his lieutenants. There is contentment, even joy, in this room of death, and the camaraderie of the friends’ triumphs over all but the most base of instincts. Even Enjolras is content among the plans to free France. But his eyes occasionally flicker to Grantaire, half hidden in darkness and he doesn’t smile.

For all that Enjolras looks on Grantaire he does so without seeing him.

Grantaire makes sure to hide behind his ugliness and his cynicism and makes sure that no one sees him.

The flame inside him only burns brighter as Enjolras uses him with no emotions behind his chiselled and cold features.

Grantaire permits himself to be touched by hands making no effect on his soul, but pressing bruises into his hips and blazing eyes looking beyond pleasure, beyond right and wrong, beyond this life.

Enjolras never says why their occasional couplings take place, and Grantaire never asks, only gives way to the lilting snarl of a voice in his ear or the vicelike grip of a steady marble hand around his shaking scarred wrist. He is not at liberty to question Enjolras’ motives or his actions.

He has not earned that right.

Instead, Grantaire: twisted, drunk and hideous; useless for revolution in his mind or his heart he has a body that Enjolras can twist pleasure out of, although this not the primary purpose of such a union.

Even amid Enjolras’ demanding loveless embraces and Grantaire’s trembling acceptance, the fire burns deeper, scarring Grantaire soul to match his features. But this flickering flame of emotion no more purifies Grantaire as it does sully Enjolras. Each man is as unaffected by Grantaire's hopeless fervour as Paris shall be by revolution.

They do not speak of it.

Instead Enjolras takes; eyes burning with revolution and breath calm, and Grantaire doesn't imagine anything but the truth of what they are.

Ugly and broken mortal things dancing together in the night.

Enjolras is not perfect and death will take them all by the light of day.

Life and death entwined in the darkness and then never to touch in the warmth of the sun. It wouldn’t be right.

In the aftermath they lie together, hidden by the night and both silent but for the sounds of Paris alive in the early morning. The city never sleeps, and while she wakes she suffers and so Enjolras must put his beloved above all others. 

Enjolras’ room are cold, for he has forsaken the cost of comfort for furthering Les Amis de l’ABC’s meagre supplies of paper and ink. The arsenal builds itself.

Enjolras is currently warm beside him, indifferent to Grantaire’s presence in his bed.

Lying in Enjolras’ bed, but not in his arms, Grantaire reaches out to the flickering flame that he holds between his palms. In the cold moonlight the ease of snuffing it out completely comes to him. He could end this, should he apply himself, could extinguish what burns so painfully bright within him singeing his palms black in the process, sealing his ugliness within his twisted body; as easy as cauterising a wound. His body is sated and satisfied in such a way as his mind can never be, and there was never any room for his heart to be similarly rested. He is content with his lot, and his life is most likely to end with the death of his friends. The more France suffers the more Enjolras will dedicate to her until he gives her the very blood from his veins. 

And then he will be no more. 

Grantaire closes his eyes, watching the darkness, and turns his back to Enjolras; feeling his chest continuing to burn from the inside out even as he waits for sleep to take him instead.


End file.
